Chapter 1

Arphaxad, king of Media, the conqueror of many nations, built a princely city, which he called Ecbatana.

Of stones cut and squared he built it, with walls seventy cubits thick and thirty cubits high, and towers reaching the height of a hundred cubits. Each of these towers was twenty feet square,

and at the foot of them he set gates to match their height.

And he boasted much of his great army, of his fine chariots;

till at last war was levied upon him by the Assyrian king Nabuchodonosor,2 then in the twelfth year of his reign, with his capital at Nineve. This Nabuchodonosor defeated him

in the great plain called Ragua, where Euphrates flows, and Tigris, and Jadason, in the lowland country belonging to Erioch, king of the Elici.

Thus to Nabuchodonosor in his turn, came power and pride. To distant lands he had sent out his demand for aid; to Cilicia, Damascus, and the Lebanon,

to Carmel, and Cedar, and Galilee about the wide Esdrelon plain,

Samaria, and all the country beyond Jordan as far as Jerusalem, and the land of Gessen3 right up to the borders of Ethiopia.

And of all the peoples to whom Nabuchodonosor, the Assyrian king, sent out his messengers,

there was not one but had refused, and sent them away thwarted and despised.

So now, in anger, Nabuchodonosor swore by his royal throne to avenge himself on these countries, one and all.